Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Arzena »

Is this project still somewhat active? If so could i join, and make a descendant of Proto-Isles?
Hi Gwynwth! Welcome to the Akana Project.

I've mostly worked in the early Western languages and medieval Huyfarah. If you have any questions about those areas, ask away!
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Gwynwth »

Frislander wrote:
Gwynwth wrote:
Cedh wrote:I agree. Welcome, Gwynwth! Do you have a specific historical scenario for your Isles language in mind?
I'm still familiarizing myself with the history of Akana, so not really. What continents are inhabited, and are we restricted to Southern Peilaš, west Tuysáfa, and Zeluzhia?
Well no not really, but most of the work has indeed been restricted to the northern half of Peilaš, all Tuysáfa (not just the west) and northern Zeluzhia. As far as we know those are the main inhabited continents, but we also know there are people on Antarctica, and the jury is out as to whether there are people on the Twins. You shouldn't feel too restricted by geography, the Isles languages being the main Austronesian equivalent you should be fine putting it in quite a wild place, you could perhaps even put it on the south-eastern Peilaš coast if you wanted, though you'd probably better wait till we start working on the autocthonous languages of the region.
The south-eastern Peilaš coast looks like a good place to put it, and i could create an indigenous proto-language of the area for loanwords and influence.

Does there happen to be any maps of the nations of the various time periods?
My primary conlangs are Podmåri and Gwynwth.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Frislander »

Gwynwth wrote:Does there happen to be any maps of the nations of the various time periods?
http://akana.conlang.org/wiki/Maps_of_Akana
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

The most likely place for a new Isles language would surely be somewhere in the eastern half of the Ttiruku island arc. Ttiruku itself is supposed to be a hotbed of linguistic diversity, but the only language there that we know so far is Pparwak. There could easily be a second branch of Isles there, and there's also LOTS of room for unrelated contact languages. (We also know that there is at least one descendant of Proto-Mbingmik supposed to be spoken on the island, but no such language has been described so far.) There's also another fairly large island immediately west of Ttiruku, the linguistic landscape of which is still completely undescribed.

If you really want to go further afield, having a look at this map of approximate ocean currents suggests a few other places that should be relatively easy to reach from the Proto-Isles homeland on the southwestern tip of Tuysáfa:
- following the warm red current a bit eastward along the mountaineous southern coast of Tuysáfa, in a region where several yet unknown Mbingmik languages are spoken, as well as a couple of unrelated languages.
- following the cold blue current to the tropical west coast of Zeluzhia, south of the area where Zeluzh is spoken. Nothing about the languages in this region has been worked out so far.
- starting from the western half of the Ttiruku arc, westwards across the bay of Kasca towards Mrisaŋfa, the homeland of the Peninsular languages. Here you'd have several known contact languages to borrow from.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Gwynwth »

Cedh wrote:The most likely place for a new Isles language would surely be somewhere in the eastern half of the Ttiruku island arc. Ttiruku itself is supposed to be a hotbed of linguistic diversity, but the only language there that we know so far is Pparwak. There could easily be a second branch of Isles there, and there's also LOTS of room for unrelated contact languages. (We also know that there is at least one descendant of Proto-Mbingmik supposed to be spoken on the island, but no such language has been described so far.) There's also another fairly large island immediately west of Ttiruku, the linguistic landscape of which is still completely undescribed.

If you really want to go further afield, having a look at this map of approximate ocean currents suggests a few other places that should be relatively easy to reach from the Proto-Isles homeland on the southwestern tip of Tuysáfa:
- following the warm red current a bit eastward along the mountaineous southern coast of Tuysáfa, in a region where several yet unknown Mbingmik languages are spoken, as well as a couple of unrelated languages.
- following the cold blue current to the tropical west coast of Zeluzhia, south of the area where Zeluzh is spoken. Nothing about the languages in this region has been worked out so far.
- starting from the western half of the Ttiruku arc, westwards across the bay of Kasca towards Mrisaŋfa, the homeland of the Peninsular languages. Here you'd have several known contact languages to borrow from.
I want to place it relatively far away from developed areas, so i can create a language family for loaning words into it (without accounting for a dozen other families). I kind of want to place it on the southern of the the western twin continent. Though that doesn't seem very likely, as it's on the other side of the world.
My primary conlangs are Podmåri and Gwynwth.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

The Gezoro grammar page now contains a proper characterisation of the various Late Gezoro dialects, including an overview of their sound changes. And the lexicon now contains dialect forms for all entries (not including semantic changes etc.; this would be a task for whoever wants to flesh out a descendant of one of the Rathedān dialects).

Now on to borrowing a couple of Kasadgad Gezoro words into Ndak Ta and sound-changing them for Buruya Nzaysa and Ndok Aisô... and if somebody else feels like adding more Gezoro loans to Adāta, please go ahead!

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Arzena »

Cedh, once again, your attention to etymological detail is a treasure to behold. Many ideas for the Gezoran substrate to Shtasa and for new ideas about lexemes / semantic change / etc to ponder in Empotle7a with this new knowledge about Gezoro. Brilliant work!
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Zju »

Any interest in reviving?
Or else, revealing the original grammars?
I'm interested in everything connected to this relay. Especially if it's a reconstruction of Proto-Ronquian, but of course that would have to come from Team Two. Zju? Pole? KathAveara? Any of you up for continuing with that?

(I don't expect to have much time and motivation for reconstructing Proto-Leic myself though. Hell, I haven't been able to do almost anything conlang-related for a year or so!)
I'm in the same boat, I'm still very interested in this project, but it would need some teamwork.

I agree that doing reconstruction has turned out to be something that my brain is not very well suited for. But I have to commend team 2 for the work done on Proto-Ronquian, it's quite impressive.
Y'all better post here, I doubt anyone much still visits that place, not frequently anyway.

On topic, I keep toying with the idea of returning to reconstruction every now and then. Seeing others are still interested, I may just as well do it after exams are over.
I have the feeling the reconstruction is about halfway there with three of the conlangs - MT, RT and RTJ. PR reconstruction for reference.

In case anyone is interested in reconstructing Leic, I could release the almost finished Pyvyy lexicon, it's not that far off.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Corumayas »

Arzena wrote:Cedh, once again, your attention to etymological detail is a treasure to behold. Many ideas for the Gezoran substrate to Shtasa and for new ideas about lexemes / semantic change / etc to ponder in Empotle7a with this new knowledge about Gezoro. Brilliant work!
I second this – very cool! (The more Ndak Ta-like romanization for the Kasadgad dialect is a nice touch.)

I have a question about the Proto-Western to Gezoro sound changes: there are a number of changes conditioned by stress, and then some changes to stress assignment in rule 24 toward the end; but no mention of how stress is assigned before that late rule. And looking closely at the rules and some of the outcomes in the lexicon I suspect that some tricky stuff may be going on. For example, my best guess is that PW γʷeye 'hill' > Gezoro gwei 'mountain' went through these stages: γʷeye > ˈɣʷeje > ˈɣʷeji > ɣʷeˈji > ɣʷji > ɣwji > gwji > gwei – that is, the final e must be unstressed when it gets raised to i by rule 4, but then (if I'm guessing correctly) the first syllable seems to become unstressed so that that e gets deleted in rule 8 (otherwise it seems like the word would become ɣʷi at rule 10, and end up as Gezoro **gui). Can you shed some light on this?

And now I've noticed another little thing: in rule 8, unstressed vowels are lost before a resonant; but then you comment that ɣ is treated like an approximant here. Does that mean vowels are lost before ɣ too? And then what about ɣʷ?

(Sorry to nitpick! But I think there should be room for a small Plateau Western family, and anyone making a sister language would need to duplicate your changes up the branching-off point. I'm imagining Gezoro and Tjakori forming one branch – it seems they must be quite closely related if they share everything up to the l > ɾ shift in rule 20; I'd put Proto-Plateau further back, say around rule 10, and I'd probably have a southern branch spoken more around the giant lake.)
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

Corumayas wrote:I have a question about the Proto-Western to Gezoro sound changes: there are a number of changes conditioned by stress, and then some changes to stress assignment in rule 24 toward the end; but no mention of how stress is assigned before that late rule. And looking closely at the rules and some of the outcomes in the lexicon I suspect that some tricky stuff may be going on. For example, my best guess is that PW γʷeye 'hill' > Gezoro gwei 'mountain' went through these stages: γʷeye > ˈɣʷeje > ˈɣʷeji > ɣʷeˈji > ɣʷji > ɣwji > gwji > gwei – that is, the final e must be unstressed when it gets raised to i by rule 4, but then (if I'm guessing correctly) the first syllable seems to become unstressed so that that e gets deleted in rule 8 (otherwise it seems like the word would become ɣʷi at rule 10, and end up as Gezoro **gui). Can you shed some light on this?
Most of the PW > Early Gezoro changes were originally written by kodé. When I started working with them, I had to figure out how to get the right outcome for his example words, and I came to the conclusion that the stress system he assumed for PW was most likely not fully phonologically predictable, but with lexical exceptions. My sound change file does have a phonological stress rule, with the option to override it for individual words: Primary stress on the first syllable, unless otherwise specified. Secondary stress on every second syllable after that, except that syllables beginning with cannot receive secondary stress.

The vowel syncope rules themselves are by far the most complicated part of the sound change file. In general though, quality changes target both unstressed and secondarily stressed syllables, whereas deletions target secondarily stressed syllables only if no adjacent unstressed syllable can be syncopated instead. For *ɣʷeje, the development is in fact simply *ˈɣʷeje > ˈɣʷeji > ˈɣʷej > ˈɣwej > ˈɣwei > ˈɡwei; I forgot to specify on the wiki that the *ej > i change in rule 10 actually only applies in unstressed non-final syllables.
And now I've noticed another little thing: in rule 8, unstressed vowels are lost before a resonant; but then you comment that ɣ is treated like an approximant here. Does that mean vowels are lost before ɣ too? And then what about ɣʷ?

Both and *ɣʷ count as resonants here, so fully unstressed vowels are indeed deleted before them. (However, rule 14 later re-inserts an epenthetic vowel in the same position, so that unstressed *CVɣ *CVɣʷ usually end up as Cig Cug.)
I think there should be room for a small Plateau Western family, and anyone making a sister language would need to duplicate your changes up the branching-off point. I'm imagining Gezoro and Tjakori forming one branch – it seems they must be quite closely related if they share everything up to the l > ɾ shift in rule 20; I'd put Proto-Plateau further back, say around rule 10, and I'd probably have a southern branch spoken more around the giant lake.)
Yes, I think there could easily be some additional Plateau Western languages besides Gezoro and Tjakori. I imagine Tjakori as definitely sharing everything up to rule 13, plus rule 16 (but not necessarily the loss of labialisation in rules 14/15) and the l > ɾ shift in rule 20 (but not necessarily including rules 17-19 and the rest of rule 20). Proto-Plateau, if it includes more languages, should probably share at least rules 1-8 and maybe 11, and may differ in the details of rules 9 and 10. (Note that in both of these situations, the exact timing of the "skipped" rule groups is for the most part not crucial for the Gezoro outcome.)

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by kanejam »

Zju wrote:
But I have to commend team 2 for the work done on Proto-Ronquian, it's quite impressive.
I have the feeling the reconstruction is about halfway there with three of the conlangs - MT, RT and RTJ. PR reconstruction for reference.
Wow that really is an impressive reconstruction - especially since it is based mostly on just 3 languages. I keep meaning to do more work on ARN; would this be helpful to reconstruction efforts? Or has it fizzled out?
Zju wrote:In case anyone is interested in reconstructing Leic, I could release the almost finished Pyvyy lexicon, it's not that far off.
I haven't looked recently (i.e. in the last two years) but from memory the available langs are fairly divergent to the point of making the reconstruction quite difficult. I am still keen, especially with more data, although I definitely can't invest much time into it.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by KathTheDragon »

Oh, man, I really ought to go back and work on my langs, or maybe contribute to the PR reconstruction again.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Corumayas »

Cedh, thanks for explaining those Gezoro sound changes, and for your very plausible suggestions for where other Plateau Western languages might branch off. It'd be interesting to see your input lexicon with stress marked; if this is the only Western language that has unpredictable stress at its earliest stage (is it? I'm not sure what starting stress system you used for Tmaśareʔ), it might mean that you've "discovered" the elusive Proto-Western stress system...

On a different front, I've modeled the sound changes from Proto-Eigə-Isthmus to Faraghin in SCA2, which helped me resolve a few uncertainties along the way. And I've had an idea for the etymology of Doroh: it could be a Fáralo borrowing from Doroh dorokk or (earlier/Proto-Doroh) dorohk, which could descend from PIsth. do~dosg 'camp repeatedly or intensely', or – more plausible semantically I think – from do(sg)~dosg 'many camps', which would be a parallel formation to Ngauro kasd~ga(s)d 'many streams'. (Of course this also recalls the etymology of Ferogh < PIsth as-pes-dosg 'of the camp-people'). What do you think?
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

Corumayas wrote:Cedh, thanks for explaining those Gezoro sound changes, and for your very plausible suggestions for where other Plateau Western languages might branch off. It'd be interesting to see your input lexicon with stress marked; if this is the only Western language that has unpredictable stress at its earliest stage (is it? I'm not sure what starting stress system you used for Tmaśareʔ), it might mean that you've "discovered" the elusive Proto-Western stress system...
The stress system in the PW dialects leading to Gezoro and Tmaśareʔ is not the same. The most obvious difference is that disyllabic adjectival prefixes were usually accented on the first syllable in Pre-Gezoro, but on the second syllable in Pre-Tmaśareʔ, resulting in word-initial consonant clusters in Tm but not Gez. Of course, there's the additional morphosyntactic factor that Gezoro has innovated free-standing adjectives while Tmaśareʔ has not. A second difference is the treatment of prefixing reduplication; in Pre-Gezoro the stem was accented, in Pre-Tmaśareʔ the reduplicant.

I'm not sure if I have documented the correct PW accent positions for all Gezoro words, but the following are the main exceptions to the default stress rule:
  • ordinal numbers with the suffix *+du, e.g. *takʷádu > takɔd 'first' (the "+" indicates that the suffix shifts the accent to the syllable before it)
  • nouns with the honorific suffix *+du, e.g. *γʷekúdu > gwɛkud 'eagle'
  • nouns with the edible suffix *+γ, e.g. *yatʰáγ > jatʰɔg 'garden'
  • nouns with the result suffix *+ła, e.g. *kʰalúła > xur 'knot'
  • nouns with the place suffix *+dłe, e.g. *takádłe 'grassland' > takɔːre 'Tjakori'
  • nouns with the collective suffix *+ʔla, e.g. *pʰudáʔla > pʰɔdɔːrɔ 'alliance' (note that this suffix was modified from canonical PW *-la in order to allow borrowing it into Adāta as -ːra; otherwise the final vowel would have been deleted)
  • some but apparently not all nouns with the "made of" suffix *+słu, e.g. *čekʰúsłu > sɛkʰuːru 'forest'
  • some but apparently not all nouns with the diminutive suffix *+kʷi, e.g. *nãγúkʷi > namuk 'toe'
  • verbs with the dynamic suffix *+tʰa, e.g. *kʰiñátʰa- > kʰiñɔtʰɔ- 'build'
  • adjectives with the intensive suffix *+sV (not present in canonical PW), e.g. *duγása > digɔs 'good'; *tupíši > tɔpil 'rare, special, unique'
  • reduplicated words, e.g. *pʰapʰáʔta- > papʰɔːtɔ- 'shoot, throw' and *šešéwa > sleu 'star'
  • plus a couple of irregular words (most of these are compounds stressed on the second element rather than the first one):
    • *dłeʔá > dea 'land, region'
    • *dzamałáγa > zɔmrɔː 'copper'
    • *neγlałáγa > niːrɔː 'silver'
    • *sabayála > sabeɔr 'warrior'
    • *načekłépʰã > nɔlɛxepʰa 'domestic animal'
    • *ʔũγʷukúʔu > mɔkuː 'armor' (note that the adjectival prefix *ʔũγʷu- 'hard, solid' always appears in Gezoro as if **mu- < **[ʔũ]γʷú-)
On a different front, I've modeled the sound changes from Proto-Eigə-Isthmus to Faraghin in SCA2, which helped me resolve a few uncertainties along the way. And I've had an idea for the etymology of Doroh: it could be a Fáralo borrowing from Doroh dorokk or (earlier/Proto-Doroh) dorohk, which could descend from PIsth. do~dosg 'camp repeatedly or intensely', or – more plausible semantically I think – from do(sg)~dosg 'many camps', which would be a parallel formation to Ngauro kasd~ga(s)d 'many streams'. (Of course this also recalls the etymology of Ferogh < PIsth as-pes-dosg 'of the camp-people'). What do you think?
I like this. Doroh being etymologically related to Ferogh is great (and blatantly obvious in hindsight!). I think I might prefer the do~dosg etymology just because the formation is different from kasd~ga(s)d, but I guess both options would work fine.

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